Secret 15: Building a Sustainable Business

Excerpted from Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 1:
A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business.

The act of creatively and constructively staying in business and, in the process, building positive benefits for all involved (the community, the people who work in the business, purveyors, investors, and, of course, customers) is probably more to the point of most “purpose-driven businesses” like ours than the more standard supposition of setting out just to make money. In the old model of business, success looks like a hot poker player who hits it big, sweeps up all his chips, cashes out, and goes home while he’s on top. In our case, by contrast, the point is to keep playing, and, in the process, to create wins for all the players at once while the pool gets ever-bigger and ever-more rewarding for all involved.